Latest Blog Posts

We're lucky in Australia, we can have flowers all year round in the garden, but often we completely miss the gorgeous colours of our tree barks!

Our gardening expert Stephen Ryan brought in a few samples this week, including some Himalayan birch (see picture) which looks and feels like wallpaper, and talked up some of the great barks best seen in the garden during winter.

Their longevity is a real plus, given most flowers and flowering shrubs have an expiry date!

The Japanese wine berry sounds delightful, and is related to the raspberry plant.

Bamboo also gets a mention here, but as Stephen says, that could be a topic for discussion all on it's own!

It seems like everyone has an opinion on the Adam Goodes situation, whether it's well informed, a gut reaction, or a similar personal experience.

And while talkback callers and texters to the Morning program his week were divided over whether or not the footy crowds booing the AFL star and former Australian of the Year are racially-motivated, this much is true, as a society we are still very uneasy about race relations and our cultural differences.

Fiona Parker spoke with Dr Matthew Klugman about this issue, he's a researcher at Victoria University's Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living, and co-author of the award-winning book 'Black and Proud'.

The book focuses on that iconic photograph of another AFL star, Nicky Winmar, responding to race-fuelled taunts in 1993 (see picture), and as Dr Klugman points out, the moment that led to the introduction of the AFL's anti-vilification rule.

Click below and listen to Dr Klugman's take on the Goodes booing phenomena, and how he believes this is a cultural crisis that the AFL must now seriously tackle :

Hazel Edwards an Australian author best known for her classic children's book 'There's a Hippopotamus on My Roof Eating Cake'... but it might surprise you to hear she's also written about many complex issues for other age-groups, including the recent young adult novel, 'f2m; the boy within,' co-authored with Ryan Kennedy.

The novel examines what it's like to be transgender as it follows the story of school-leaver Skye, who is transitioning from female to male.

Hazel Edwards will be one of the speakers at the 'Text Marks the Spot' day at the Bendigo Writers Festival in August, speaking about GLBTI literature for Young Adults. For more info on the Bendigo Writers Fest, go to www.bendigowritersfestival.com.au

More than 40 current and former workers at Australia’s detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island published an open letter on July 1, challenging the government to prosecute them under new secrecy laws for speaking out over human rights abuses.

Here’s part of that letter... "Today the Border Force Act comes into force. It includes provision for a two-year jail sentence for 'entrusted persons' such as ourselves if we continue to speak out about the deplorable state of human rights in immigration detention without the express permission of the Minister for immigration and border protection.

This strengthens the wall of secrecy which prevents proper public scrutiny. We have advocated, and will continue to advocate, for the health of those for whom we have a duty of care, despite the threats of imprisonment, because standing by and watching sub-standard and harmful care, child abuse and gross violations of human rights is not ethically justifiable."

Earlier this year, Mornings spoke with Central Victorian mental health nurse Chris Cummins, who had just returned to Australia after five years working with asylum seekers on Christmas Island - as team leader of the Torture and Trauma Counselling Service - and we wanted to find out what she thought of her colleagues letter and the new legislation.

A good picture book can tell an extraordinarily complex story in very simple ways, and young children often do understand more than we give them credit for, so this week our children's literature expert Sarah Mayor Cox introduced us to a terrific example of just what a picture book can do.

She says Flight by Nadia Wheatley and Armin Greder is one of the most extraordinary and timely books she's read in ages.

Our children's and young adult (YA) literature expert Sarah Mayor Cox takes a look at some of the great books available for young adults today.

By YA, we mean readers aged 15-25, with stories that cover issues and events more appropriate for that older secondary school level, and adults!

In A Small Madness by Dianne Touchell, Rose and Michael are madly in love, working hard at school when the unthinkable happens - they fall pregnant.

The book charts Rose and Michael’s relationship, Rose’s pregnancy and her descent into the madness of denial, with Touchell taking the question “Does doing something monstrous make you a monster?” as the premise of this heartbreaking story.

Readers may feel themselves turned inside out emotionally as they journey with Rose and Michael from the moments of first love, to the moment they realise their lives are linked forever in ways never imagined.

This is a gut wrenching book which looks at teenage pregnancy in a remarkably honest way. Touchell manages to tell the story from many angles, so that we realise there are going to be no winners, though strangely Sarah says she found that for all the heaviness that hangs over the book, there is hope too and lessons for the reader whispered subtly and with great compassion - that it doesn’t and didn’t have to be like this.

Listen to Sarah speaking about the book with Morning show presenter Dan Glover here:

While The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness isn't being released until August, Sarah couldn't wait to review it, because it's just so good! She says Patrick Ness has written this story for all the YA readers out there who don’t feel they are ’The Chosen One’ in life.

The ones that wouldn’t be chosen to fight the evil forces being unleashed on the world. The ones who are actually happy being normal, because there is enough to cope with in their ordinary lives as it is. Like Mikey, a normal young American man, wanting to fall in love, find himself and graduate before some ‘chosen one’ blows up his high school (as has happened in the past).

Patrick Ness reveals what a master writer he is in this humorous take on real world hero fantasy that follows a group of YAs who are going about life in their final year of high school - set against a series of strange murders and disappearances. It turns out that these gruesome deaths are caused by supernatural forces, The Immortals, who are looking to open a portal that will allow them to take over the world.

It’s a very droll book that mashes up contemporary YA fiction with speculation fiction.

In The Intern and Faking it by Gabrielle Tozer, the author draws on her real life experience working in the magazine publishing world to bring us this behind-the-scenes contemporary YA fiction about Josie Browning.

Josie is a keen but klutzy writing student who falls into an internship at a glossy fashion magazine.

For all her eagerness and hard work this is a world Josie does not fit into - she has too much integrity, is too honest and earnest, and most of all, wears her heart on her sleeve where everyone can see it and take advantage of it. If you loved ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, you’ll love these books.

This week our gardening expert Stephen Ryan was keen to extol the virtues of Helleborus, often called the winter rose because that's when they tend to flower, or sometimes the Christmas rose (due to our British/northern hemisphere heritage).

Hugely diverse in variety, they're hardy and comparatively easy to grow; sometimes grown more for their foliage than their flowers - which come in all kinds of colours, and these day often as a pretty, romantic, many-petaled full double flower (pink flower pictured).

Listen to Morning program presenter Dan Glover speaking to Stephen about hellebores by clicking below:

You might wonder at first 'What do grammar and images have in common?' But actually coming at grammar from a completely different direction as Tohby Riddle does in The Greatest Gatsby: A Visual Book of Grammar (Penguin Viking), could be very useful for people who are 'visual' thinkers, according to our literature expert Sarah Mayor Cox.

The basic premise of this book is that 'grammar is order, structure', grammar is there to make sense.

Riddle explains how grammar works. He starts with words, explaining that they're made up of letters (vowels and consonants) and that grammar gives words names (or categories).

Here the first of his very clever images starts to work. He references a London Underground visual to explain how words are categorised and how they are related to each other within these categories.

Sarah says this would be a really useful image to use if you were trying to teach about language usage - or even if you were just trying to remember how the different categories relate to each other. The book explores and explains some grammatical concepts that many people will have struggled with over the years - and that some current students might find a struggle.

However, it's interesting that the author has taken quite a traditional spin on grammar. There is another way these days that we approach grammar called 'Functional Grammar' which focuses on the functions that grammar plays on language usage, for instance, in traditional grammar you would focus on the structure of the language parts and what they do. Whereas in functional grammar you would focus more on how these words function and affect or manipulate the reader.

So in the example of passive and active voice, you wouldn't just teach what they are, how to do it, and how to recognise it - you would teach about the effect it has on the reader, and the effect it creates in the piece of writing (ie. an active voice is stronger and usually engages the reader more because the writing sounds more invigorated).

Listen to Sarah discussing this book with Morning program presenter Fiona Parker here:

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris (Text Publishing) is fascinating because it defies categorisation. It is partly a memoir about Mary Norris and her 30 year career as a copy editor at The New Yorker, and partly a manual on how to use language in a finessed and appropriate way.

Sarah says her wickedly intelligent sense of humour shines throughout the book – although being completely in awe of Norris because of her vast working knowledge of the English language may have coloured her objectivity somewhat!

The book is very loosely organised, so that it appears to be a ramble through the forest of English grammar, but actually it is a very carefully constructed book that weaves together events in Norris' life, the history of everything from lead pencils to the comma, and why it's important to get grammar 'right'.

There are some very funny chapters, such as the one titled 'Comma Comma Comma Comma, Chameleon', which not only gives a potted history of the comma but also explains the two schools of thought about when and why to use commas; the first is about using it 'by ear' and other is to use it to clarify meaning.

At times the American references can go over one's head, but when that happens Sarah suggests you just skip on through to the next anecdote, history lesson or explanation of the finer details of grammar.

If you are a lover of correct English usage, and have ever been accused of being a 'grammar nazi' then this is the book for you. Click below to hear Sarah's review:

Don't you love it when the leaves begin to turn at Autumn time and you get these amazing cascades of yellows, golds, oranges, reds, purples and browns across the landscape?

It's perhaps not so great when they fall and you're constantly having to rake those leaves up into piles in the front and backyard, but prior to that the colours are just gorgeous!

Our gardening expert Stephen Ryan speaks here with Morning show presenter Fiona Parker about some of the different plants - trees, shrubs and vines that look terrific in the garden at this time of year.

When most of us think about berries, it's usually in the context of the delicious, plump, ripe fruits we love to eat - strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, the list goes on!

Most of those are of course, summer growing crops for the home gardener, so the Autumn berry was a much different prospect for discussion on our on-air gardening session recently.

It was all about ornamental berries for the backyard when Fiona Parker was joined by the the Morning show's gardening expert Stephen Ryan, who brought in a few samples from his own garden (pictured here).

Whether it's bringing colour to the garden, or in a vase arrangement indoors, or indeed attracting some lovely birds into the backyard, there's a wide range of plants to choose from that fruit at this time of year.

You can listen to Stephen discussing his turquoise berries, vibernums, spindle berries, the odd-smelling clerodendrum, Ruscus aculeatus or 'butcher's blooms', and a medlar by clicking below:

Our gardening expert Stephen Ryan spoke about the joys of correct plant pronunciations this week on the Morning show, focusing particularly on cyclamen.

Gorgeous in a pot, even better as a splash of colour in the garden, these plants have a reputation for being difficult to grow but Stephen assured us that's not really the case.

Now is the time they start to flower and they'll go for a good two months without much work at all. It is however, important to remember that they're not indoor plants and they don't like direct sunlight, better to go for a good spot on the verandah, or in the ground under a nice deciduous tree.

There are species which are a lot harder to grow, and ones that grow at other times of the year, so if you're up for more of a challenge talk to your local nursery staff about the best cyclamen for your purposes.

Our children's literature expert from Latrobe University, Sarah Mayor Cox loves a book with attitude, and she says David Ezra Stein'sI’m my Own Dog has it in spades, not only in words but in its illustrations too.

“I’m my own dog. Nobody owns me. I own myself,” says the dog standing upright with his front right paw leaning up against a fire hydrant (this is an American book). He takes himself for walks, throws his own sticks, sits when he commands himself to sit. That is until he can’t reach a part in the middle of his back and asks a random bloke to scratch it for him.

This ‘little fella’ then won’t leave the dog alone, following him home like a stray. The dog feels sorry for him and gets him a leash so the man can follow the dog around.

This a a classic example of a picture book turning the world as we know it on its head, so we can look at things in a new way. There's lots of subtle humour about the relationship between dogs and humans from this award winning author illustrator.

And finally, The Bush Book Club by Margaret Wild and Ben Wood is a sweet story about wanting/not wanting to read. It could have become rather a didactic story in the hands of lesser storytellers but Wild and Wood have done a marvelous job at bringing to us the story of Bilby.

Everyone but Bilby belongs to The Bush Book Club, the reasons he doesn’t belong are not clear at first, but it soon becomes apparent that he either can’t or won’t read. He ends up attending a club meeting by accident, and then gets trapped overnight in the clubhouse.

It has a very predictable story arc, but it is satisfying and gives children lots of room to talk about whether they like or dislike reading (and their reasons). A wonderful book, illustrated with Ben Wood’s delightful water-colour, aquarelle pencil illustrations to give it a very reassuring feel.

Is there anything better than a waving sea of colourful tulips at Spring time?

Now is the time to be planting all those lovely bulbs that flower into spectacular colour come Spring, not unlike the beautiful beds seen around Bendigo's public gardens (pictured here).

While tulips, daffodils, irises and jonquils are very popular, our gardening expert Stephen Ryan was keen to talk up some of the other bulbs people might like to try and grow this year, including a rather large specimen he brought into the studio - which is known as a sea squill!

See below for an image of that rather impressive monster.

And you can listen to Stephen's discussion about planting bulbs with the Morning show presenter Fiona Parker by clicking below:

While it may be hard to believe it's been 25 years since Alison Lester's book Imaginewas published, the release of Imagine: Special 25th Anniversary Edition (Allen and Unwin) means it must be true!

Our children's literature expert Sarah Mayor Cox says Alison Lester’s books are on so many family book shelves and in so many school and preschool libraries for good reason, she is the quintessential Australian author/illustrator.

She has over the years, captured the smallest and grandest moments in a child’s life, and this wonderful book celebrates the power of the imagination.

The anniversary edition is superb; hardcover and published in a larger format than when it was first released in 1989. Told in seven double-part ‘scenes', Lester first shows us two children dressing up and imagining being in the jungle, and on the following page the children are magically transported there.

The children then imagine visiting the ocean, a farm, a dinosaur swamp, an African plain and lastly an amalgam Australian bush scene. The second page of each scene is framed with words of creatures that can be found in the illustration, while the end papers include a key to all the animals Lester has so beautifully illustrated.

It’s a gorgeous book to hold, and a wonderful balance of fact and fiction. Imagination is one of the things we know we need to encourage in children, and a book like this is one families can pour over together for hours. Alison Lester’s distinctive watercolour/aquarelle pencil, apparently ‘simple’ style is very accessible for children. Imagine is also a very distinctively designed book, with framing and elliptical shapes beautifully arranged within her landscape format.

Listen to Sarah discussing the book with Morning show presenter Fiona Parker here:

The Impossible Quest 1: Escape from Wolfhaven Castle by Kate Forsyth (Scholastic) is a classic high fantasy for younger readers by one of Australia’s most popular authors.

Many older readers may be familiar with Kate Forsyth's writing for older readers, but her work for younger readers is beyond a delight. Her writing is so polished, yet fresh, she doesn’t put a foot wrong with her characters, setting or plot and is able to achieve such a believable world and desperate predicament in such a short book.

It’s the story of four young people - Tom the pot-boy (son of the Castle Cook), Elanor the daughter of the Lord of Wolfhaven Castle, Sebastian a knight in training, and Quinn a witch in training. They are gutsy and interesting characters (and typical reluctant heroes) who spend as much time fighting the politics of their rogue group, and their own demons, as they do fighting their evil enemies who have taken over Wolfhaven Castle and locked up all the inhabitants, including Tom’s mum, Elanor’s father and Sebastian’s boss.

In true high-fantasy fashion each child hero is gifted a magical object to help them achieve their goal; in this case defeating the evil knight with the boar tusk horns, and his supernatural leather wrapped zombie-like foot soldiers.

Sarah says she was on the edge of her seat most of the time while reading this book and just when she thought, ‘Oh yes, she’s using this particular device or structure', Forsyth would twist the story in a different direction or throw a new idea into the mix.

There will be five books in this series altogether, which is great news for those readers that like getting their teeth into series. There’s also a webpage to value-add to the experience.

Finally,Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee (Hot Key Books, part of the Bonnier Publishing Group) is one of the most delightful and escapist alternate reality fantasy books Sarah says she has ever read.

If you loved The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen and Withering-by-Sea by Judith Rossell then you will just love Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy (who is called that because he has had his name taken from him) and the whole premise of this book.

Ophelia’s father is a ‘leading international expert on swords' who gets a job in a very strange museum in a strange city, with the mysterious and beautiful Miss Kaminski as his boss.

Again it's the story of a reluctant hero, this time in the form of Ophelia Jane Worthington-Wittard, who doesn’t think she is brave but is certainly curious beyond being safe. She discovers the Marvelous Boy in Room 303, while wandering through the spooky museum one day. He tells her his story, and of course from then on Ophelia is dragged into the quest to free him, help find the ‘Other One’ and defeat the evil Snow Queen.